Bootstrapping conjectural indicators of vulnerability for schizophrenia: A Reply to Faraone's critique of Watt, Grubb, and Erlenmeyer-Kimling.

Presented is a reply to the article "Validating indicators of vulnerability to schizophrenia: A comment on Watt, Grubb, and Erlenmeyer- Kimling", (1983). Demonstration of statistically significant mean differences between high-risk and normal control children provides little information concerning the validity and clinical utility of conjectural indicators of vulnerability to schizophrenia. Taxometric methods offer a promising approach for preliminary testing of the validity and clinical utility of such indicators. It is not required that the indicators be nearly infallible. Accurate identification of vulnerability is still possible by combining several indicators that are fallible but relatively independent within the vulnerable and nonvulnerable subgroups. Mixed-group validation methods would be preferable to criterion-group methods in some vulnerability studies but they require dependable estimates of the base rates of vulnerability in high-risk and control groups, which are not available in the present instance. Because of the lack of an available criterion measure of vulnerability in high-risk studies, uncertainty about the validity of conjectural indicators is presently unavoidable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of partial information in learning to read Chinese characters.

This study investigated whether children can use partial information to learn the pronunciations of Chinese characters. Participants were 49 2nd graders and 56 4th graders whose home language was Mandarin and 75 2nd graders and 93 4th graders whose home language was Cantonese. Children had 2 trials to learn the Mandarin pronunciations of 28 unfamiliar compound characters of 4 types. Children learned to pronounce more regular characters, which contain full information about pronunciation, and more tone-different and onset-different characters, which contain partial information about pronunciation, than characters with unknown phonetic components, which contain no information about pronunciation. Mandarin-speaking children learned more pronunciations than Cantonese-speaking children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Choice in Children's Learning: A Distinctive Cultural and Gender Difference in Efficacy, Interest, and Effort.

A cross-cultural experiment testing the effect of personal choice on learning was conducted with fifth- and sixth-graders from Canada (n = 130) and Taiwan (n = 153) using a computerized foreign language learning task. The results showed that choice had no significant impact on children's interest, effort, or learning outcome. Although comparable to their Chinese counterparts in efficacy beliefs, the Canadian children reported to be more interested but showed less effort and performed less well on the task. The Canadian boys had a lower efficacy belief and consistently showed less interest and effort than the girls; this gender gap, however, was not evident in the Chinese. Unlike the Canadians, Chinese children's effort was unrelated to efficacy beliefs or interest. When told explicitly there would be no test, Chinese children became more interested in the task but the Canadians were unaffected. Implications of these findings are discussed and further studies are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Perirhinal Cortex in Visual Discrimination Learning for Visual Secondary Reinforcement in Rats.

Perirhinal cortex in monkeys has been thought to be involved in visual associative learning. The authors examined rats' ability to make associations between visual stimuli in a visual secondary reinforcement task. Rats learned 2-choice visual discriminations for secondary visual reinforcement. They showed significant learning of discriminations before any primary reinforcement. Following bilateral perirhinal cortex lesions, rats continued to learn visual discriminations for visual secondary reinforcement at the same rate as before surgery. Thus, this study does not support a critical role of perirhinal cortex in learning for visual secondary reinforcement. Contrasting this result with other positive results, the authors suggest that the role of perirhinal cortex is in "within-object" associations and that it plays a much lesser role in stimulus-stimulus associations between objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive Processes in Stereotype Formation: The Role of Correct Contingency Learning for Biased Group Judgments.

Three studies investigated contingency learning and stereotype formation in a scenario about group membership and behavior with a confounding context factor. The studies tested predictions from theoretical accounts of biased group judgments in terms of simplistic reasoning, parallel distributed memory, and pseudocontingencies. Study 1 revealed a positive correlation between erroneous stereotype formation and learning of the true contingencies with the confounding factor. Study 2 showed that a focus manipulation during encoding moderated the correlation between stereotype formation and contingency learning but not the strength of the erroneous stereotype. Study 3 used a quasiexperimental comparison between participants with biased versus unbiased group judgments and extended the findings of a positive relation between stereotype formation and contingency learning. The results support an explanation of biased group judgments by pseudocontingencies; that is, unwarranted inferences from accurately perceived bivariate correlations in complex environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors related to English reading performance in children with Chinese as a first language: More evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological processing.

Parallel measures of phonological, syntactic, and orthographic processing skill and reading were administered in English and in Chinese to 65 children whose 1st language (L1) was Cantonese and whose 2nd language (L2) was English. Phonological skill was correlated across L1 and L2. Phonological skill in both L1 and L2 was correlated with L2 reading and contributed a unique variance to L2 reading, even though the children's L1 was not written in an alphabetic orthography, whereas the 2nd language had an alphabetic orthography. This research adds to a growing body of evidence for cross-language transfer of phonological processing in L2 learning of English-as-a-Second-Language students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transfer of Spatial Behavior Between Different Environments: Implications for Theories of Spatial Learning and for the Role of the Hippocampus in Spatial Learning.

In 3 experiments, rats were required to find a submerged platform located in 1 corner of an arena that had 2 long and 2 short sides; they were then trained to find the platform in a new arena that also had 2 long and 2 short sides but a different overall shape. The platform in the new arena was easier to find if it was in a corner that was geometrically equivalent, rather than the mirror image, of the corner where it had previously been located. The final experiment revealed that hippocampal lesions impaired rats' ability to find the platform in these arenas. The results suggest that rats did not use the overall shape of the arena to locate the platform but relied on more local cues and that the hippocampus plays a role in navigation based on these cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Localization of Function Within the Dorsal Hippocampus: The Role of the CA3 Subregion in Paired-Associate Learning.

Computational models and electrophysiological data suggest that the CA3 subregion of the hippocampus supports the formation of arbitrary associations; however, no behavioral studies have been conducted to test this hypothesis. Rats with neurotoxin-induced lesions of dorsal dentate gyrus (DG), CA3, or CA1 were tested on object-place and odor-place paired-associate tasks to test whether the mechanism that supports paired-associate learning is localized to the CA3 subregion of the dorsal hippocampus or whether all hippocampal subregions contribute to paired-associate learning. The data indicate that rats with DG or CA1 lesions learned the tasks as well as controls; however, CA3-lesioned rats were impaired in learning the tasks. Thus, the CA3 subregion of the dorsal hippocampus contains a mechanism to support paired-associate learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The answer is only the beginning: Extended discourse in Chinese and U.S. mathematics classrooms.

The authors investigated the use of a particular discourse practice--continued questioning and discussion after a correct answer was provided, which they called extended discourse--and examined the frequency and content of this practice in 17 Chinese and 14 U.S. elementary mathematics classes. They found that the Chinese classrooms had more, and spent more time in, extended discourse than did the U.S. classrooms. The content of these episodes differed: The Chinese classrooms focused more on rules and procedures than did the U.S. classrooms, whereas the U.S. classrooms focused more on computation than did the Chinese classrooms. These findings shed light on interesting practices of discourse in both countries and also have implications for current U.S. reforms in mathematics pedagogy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Classic in Psychotherapy Integration Revisited: The Dynamics of Psychotherapy in the Light of Learning Theory.

Discusses the history of psychoanalytic treatment and the dynamics of psychotherapy. The essential psychodynamic principles on which psychoanalytic treatments rest have solid observational foundations: 1) during treatment unconscious (repressed) material becomes conscious; 2) the mobilization of unconscious material is achieved mainly by interpretation of material emerging during free association and by the patient's emotional interpersonal experiences in the therapeutic situation (transference); 3) the patient shows resistance against recognizing unconscious content; and 4) it is only natural that the neurotic patient will sooner or later direct his typical neurotic attitude toward his therapist. Current studies give encouragement and hope that we shall eventually be able to understand more adequately this intricate interpersonal process and to account for therapeutic successes and failures. In the field of psychotherapy the long overdue observation of the therapeutic process by nonparticipant observers is turning out to be the required methodological tool. At present, we are witnessing the beginnings of a most promising integration of psychoanalytic theory and practice of the psychotherapies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning about violence against women in research methods: A comparison to traditional pedagogy.

The current study examined whether a community-engaged class in undergraduate psychology research methods was able to educate students about violence against women without sacrificing acquisition of research methods knowledge. We compared student outcomes in a traditional research methods course to those in a community-engaged research methods course. Students in the community-engaged course completed a research project on violence against women that was informed by the research needs of community partners. Drawing on pre- and post-assessments, we determined that students in both community-engaged and traditional courses showed significant increases in knowledge of research methods core concepts. In addition, students in the community-engaged course showed significant increases in knowledge about violence against women and beliefs about their ability to conduct engaged research in the future. Thus, the community-engaged course offered an opportunity to teach students about violence against women using engaged-learning practices without sacrificing acquisition of core research methods knowledge, relative to the comparison class. This study demonstrates that integrating trauma topics (in this case, violence against women) into the existing curriculum is a viable route to educating undergraduate students about trauma. Implications for incorporating trauma and community engagement into undergraduate curricula are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tolerance to Amphetamine Hypophagia: A Real-Time Depiction of Learning to Suppress Stereotyped Movements in the Rat.

To analyze how tolerance develops to amphetamine-induced hypophagia, the authors recorded real-time licking responses in rats given chronic injections of the drug and access to milk for 30 min. Initially, licking was greatly reduced and occurred only late in the session. The acquisition of tolerance was characterized by a decrease in the latency to initiate licking, a gradual increase in the number of licks, and a reorganization of the temporal licking pattern such that licks were distributed throughout the session, interspersed with pauses. On posttolerance dose-response tests, licking was directly proportional to drug dose in some rats. The results support the view that tolerance to amphetamine hypophagia involves a behavioral adaptation to the motor effects of the drug. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Nature of the Mental Representation of Radicals in Chinese: A Priming Study.

Using a priming procedure, 4 experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of a short preexposure of a prime that was a radical or contained radicals identical to the target. Significant facilitation was found when the target contained the prime as a radical, although only for low-frequency targets which did not arise merely as a result of graphical similarity. Facilitation also occurred when the prime and target shared a radical in the same position but not when in different positions. When the prime and target had exactly the same radicals but in different positions, however, the priming effect was inhibitory. This set of results suggests that simple characters (radicals) and complex characters are represented at a different level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Bottom-Up Processing in Perceptual Categorization by 3- to 4-Month-Old Infants: Simulations and Data.

Disentangling bottom-up and top-down processing in adult category learning is notoriously difficult. Studying category learning in infancy provides a simple way of exploring category learning while minimizing the contribution of top-down information. Three- to 4-month-old infants presented with cat or dog images will form a perceptual category representation for cat that excludes dogs and for dog that includes cats. The authors argue that an inclusion relationship in the distribution of features in the images explains the asymmetry. Using computational modeling and behavioral testing, the authors show that the asymmetry can be reversed or removed by using stimulus images that reverse or remove the inclusion relationship. The findings suggest that categorization of nonhuman animal images by young infants is essentially a bottom-up process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Rhodes et al. (2003): Exercise Increases Hippocampal Neurogenesis to High Levels but Does Not Improve Spatial Learning in Mice Bred for Increased Voluntary Wheel Running.

Reports an error in the original article by Justin S. Rhodes, Henriette van Praag, Susan Jeffrey, Isabelle Girard, Gordon S. Mitchell, Theodore Garland Jr., and Fred H. Gage (Behavioral Neuroscience, 2003, Vol. 117, No. 5, pp. 1006-1016. In Figure 3, the symbols representing the "Control runners" and "Selected no wheels" groups were reversed in Panel B. They should match the legend in Panel A: Open circles should appear as solid squares, and solid squares as open circles. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 2003-08567-013.) The hippocampus is important for the acquisition of new memories. It is also one of the few regions in the adult mammalian brain that can generate new nerve cells. The authors tested the hypothesis that voluntary exercise increases neurogenesis and enhances spatial learning in mice selectively bred for high levels of wheel running (S mice). Female S mice and outbred control (C) mice were housed with and without running wheels for 40 days. 5-Bromodeoxyuridine was used to label dividing cells. The Morris water maze was used to measure spatial learning. C runners showed a strong positive correlation between running distance and new cell number, as well as improved learning. In S runners, neurogenesis increased to high levels... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rowed to recovery: The use of phonological and orthographic information in reading Chinese and English.

To examine how readers of Chinese and English take advantage of orthographic and phonological features in reading, the authors investigated the effects of spelling errors on reading text in Chinese and English using the error disruption paradigm of M. Daneman and E. Reingold (1993). Skilled readers in China and the United States read passages in their native language that contained occasional spelling errors. Results showed that under some circumstances very early phonological activation can be identified in English, but no evidence for early phonology was found in Chinese. In both languages, homophone errors showed a benefit in measures of later processing, suggesting that phonology helps readers recover from the disruptive effects of errors. These results suggest that skilled readers take advantage of the special features of particular orthographies but that these orthographic effects may be most pronounced in the early stages of lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relations of temperamental effortful control and anger/frustration to Chinese children's academic achievement and social adjustment: A longitudinal study.

The prospective relations of temperamental effortful control and anger/frustration to Chinese children's (N = 425, age range = 6.6–9.1 years) academic achievement (grade point average, or GPA) and social adjustment (externalizing problems and social competence) were examined in a 2-wave (3.8 years apart) longitudinal study. Parents and teachers rated children's temperament, and parents, teachers, and/or peers rated children's externalizing problems and social competence. Effortful control positively predicted children's GPA, controlling for prior level of GPA. Analyses examining the potential mechanisms underlying the temperament–achievement associations suggested that effortful control positively predicted social competence, and social competence positively predicted GPA. Moreover, anger/frustration positively predicted externalizing problems, and externalizing problems negatively predicted GPA. Mediational analyses suggested that the relations between temperament and GPA were mediated by social competence and externalizing problems. Evidence for the reciprocal relations between externalizing problems and GPA was also found. The study suggested that there are complex interplays among temperament, academic achievement, and social adjustment for school-age children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cognitive-ecological approach to preventing aggression in urban settings: Initial outcomes for high-risk children.

A multiyear, multicontext aggression prevention intervention was provided during the early or late elementary school years in an inner-city and an urban poor community. Sixteen schools were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions: (a) no-treatment control, (b) general enhancement classroom program, (c) general enhancement plus small-group peer-skills training, or (d) general enhancement plus small-group peer-skills training plus family intervention. This article reports on results for the high-risk subsample of 1,500 children. Results from hierarchical linear modeling indicate that comprehensive interventions, if provided in early grades, can be effective for children in schools in settings with resources adequate to support learning and development, but some unintended effects can occur in schools in the most distressed communities when delivered too late in development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Biological and Environmental Contexts in the Integration of Psychology: A Reply to Posner and Rothbart.

The unification of psychology is an important goal, and Posner and Rothbart (this issue) do psychology a great service in proposing Hebb's (1949) model as a basis for unification (see record 2004-20689-003). But Hebb's model deals only with a biological level of analysis. A more comprehensive plan for unification would deal with ecological and cultural levels of analysis as well. In this article, I propose a more encompassing basis for thinking about unification, and give an example of how taking into account cultural context may change one's perspective on psychological phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Role of Primary and Secondary Control in Adaptation to Age-Related Vision Loss: A Study of Older Adults With Macular Degeneration.

This study examines the effect of primary and secondary control on 3 major outcomes experienced by visually impaired older adults, that is, functional ability, adaptation to vision loss, and positive affect. The authors' theoretical model is based on the J. Heckhausen and R. Schulz (1995) control framework, as well as a conceptual integration of these outcomes, and they hypothesized that control beliefs can substantially contribute to explaining interindividual differences in these outcomes. A path model applied to data from a sample (N = 90) of visually impaired older adults, suffering from age-related macular degeneration, the major cause of vision loss in old age, generally supports this expectation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)